Growing Pains

Chapter 24 - Pretending until it became true

E T H A N 

I was almost done with Mrs. Milton's groceries when Ronny's school called. Mom hadn't shown up to pick him up. They had tried calling, but she wasn't picking up her phone either. I apologized to Mrs. Milton. I had been running her errands since I was ten years old, and she had been paying me ever since. Her and everyone else in the neighborhood too old to be able to do their groceries, or fix a pipe, or mow their lawns. I was their handyman. I could do it all, and I did.

Not today though. Today Mrs. Milton would have to finish putting her groceries away by herself. Most people didn't need me to do that for them too, but Mrs. Milton, I suspected, liked my company, and so insisted I helped her put everything away after I walked in with all the groceries she had scribbled on the back of the newspaper crosswords. I had helped her do those too.

She let me go with a shake of head, urging me to hurry. Her left knee was hurting, so she suspected it might rain soon. I thanked her and rushed out of the door and down the front steps of her porch, then down the street, towards the bus stop. It was too far to walk, much less run.

On the bus, I tried to call mom myself. She had told me not to worry this morning, said she had the afternoon off, so she could pick up Ronny from school and go grocery shopping. I had given her our food stamps. Usually I was the one who dealt with them, but this morning, mom had looked like she could do it.

Now, the call rang and rang, and no one picked up on the other end. I hung up. It started raining the moment I got off the bus. The ride had been almost half an hour and I had been chewing my nails for the whole of it, picking at the loose skin around them until it bled. I stepped out into the sidewalk and ran towards Ronny's school. It was just one block away from the bus stop.

By the time I got there, I was drenched from head to toe and struggling to breathe. I hadn't expected them to be waiting for me by the school gates, but they were. A big brooding man with an unimpressed look on his face and an umbrella over both himself and my little brother, who ran from under it as soon as he saw me.

"I'm really sorry, Ronny," I told him when he reached me, picking him up and kissing his face. He was crying. I knew he would be. The big man watched me walk closer to him, still unimpressed, still holding the umbrella like he was mad at it.

"I'm really sorry about this," I started. I didn't recognize him, but the name tag on his jumpsuit said Tate Dashner. I supposed he was one of the janitors at the school and wondered where Ronny's teacher was. Usually she waited until every kid left to leave herself.

"Mrs. Thomas had to leave. Doctor's appointment," he told me, watching as I struggled to put my brother down so I could take off my jacket and put it on him. Ronny refused to let go of me, clinging to my shoulders, and then my leg.

Mr. Dashner kept watching, moving only his arm so the umbrella would protect Ronny from the rain but taking it away after I finally managed to pull the hood of the jacket over his blonde curls. The jacket was too big, a windbreaker Isaac didn't wear anymore. On Ronny it looked like a rain poncho. I smiled at him, then turned to Mr. Dashner again.

"Thank you for waiting with him. I had to take the bus –"

"He's been crying for hours," he stopped me. "And he refused to wait inside. I'm gonna have to work overtime to make up for the time I wasted waiting out here in the rain for you."

"I'm really sorry. It won't happen again," I said, even though I was sure I had said this before to Mrs. Thomas. Mr. Dashner rolled his eyes, so I picked my brother up again. We were ready to leave, and I wanted to get out of here as soon as possible. Ronny wrapped his arms and legs around me and hid his face on my shoulder.

I looked at Mr. Dashner, "Right, we don't wanna steal any more of your time, so off we go. Thank you again. And sorry."

"Right," he said. Then he turned around and left.

I did the same. The bus was coming when I turned the corner, so I had to make a run for it with Ronny in my arms, but we made it. We sat in the back, or I did, and Ronny sat on my lap. He wasn't crying anymore, but he still wouldn't let go of me. I didn't mind.

"Did you have a nice day?" I asked and he just shook his head.

"Wanna have pizza for dinner?" I tried again and this time he nodded.

Except, of course, there wasn't any pizza at home. I had planned on buying some frozen one when I went grocery shopping today, but I had given the food stamps to mom and mom was nowhere to be found.

So there was no pizza. I didn't tell Ronny this. Instead, when we got home, we went straight to the shower. I was freezing in my soaking clothes and Ronny had spent the day sweating into his at school, so I stripped us both down, threw our clothes in the laundry basket, and turned on the hot water. Most days there was exactly enough hot water for one person to shower, so Ronny and I showered together. It had taken us a while to choreograph a dynamic that worked but we had managed.

Ronny was in a better mood by the time we were done. He put on his pajama all by himself, an old jumpsuit I had grown out of years and years ago, and I put on mine, a pair of sweats and a t-shirt.

We both had homework. Ronny needed to color inside the lines of something and I had to write down the causes of the English reformation. He started his while I found us something to eat. There was a loaf of bread that would go bad in a few days, sachets of ketchup from burger night last week, a block of cheese, and not much else.

Usually we didn't turn on the oven, but I couldn't think of anything else, so tonight we would have to. I cut the crust off the loaf of bread while reading the chapter we had gone over in World History class. Then I spread the ketchup over them, then the cheese, some pepper, and in the end, put it all in the oven. I had told Ronny we would have pizza for dinner, so pizza it was.

While the cheese melted over the bread, I tried writing something that made sense for my homework. Ronny was almost done with his, except Ronny took the task of coloring inside the lines so seriously that he didn't color anywhere near them. I had to show him how to do it. In the end, I managed only a couple lines about the English reformation before deciding I would just copy off Isaac tomorrow morning.

By the time we were done eating and doing the dishes, it was way past Ronny's bedtime. We brushed our teeth in front of the bathroom mirror, Ronny piggy backing off me so he could see his reflection too. Then bed. We shared a bedroom, my brother and I, and a twin sized bed. I didn't mind, neither did Ronny.

We fell asleep almost immediately, Ronny with his head on my chest, me with mine everywhere else. I had tried calling mom a few more times during dinner and got to hear her voicemail every single one of them. I wondered where she was, what she was doing. Nothing good probably. It never was.

I woke up again at two a.m. with the sound of the front door slamming shut. Then voices. Mom's and someone else's. I closed my eyes again and pretended to be asleep when my bedroom door moved. Someone had walked in. Mom. Probably. Hopefully.

"Where do you have your condoms, Ethan?" she asked. I didn't answer. I didn't even move. I just went on pretending to be asleep. I wished I was.

The drawers in my bedside table opened and closed, and after a few cursing so did the door. Mom hadn't found condoms because I didn't have any, of course, but I didn't tell her this and I didn't think I would any time soon anyway.

I just kept pretending to be asleep. I knew if I did it for long enough, eventually it would become true. Mostly, my life was this, pretending until it became true.